# Wineador - top level humidity issues. Everywhere else - fine.



## Lucifer Morningstar (Jan 13, 2017)

Hey folks.

*My wineador setup:*
Cybercool 28 bottle TE.
3-4 pounds of Heartfelt 65% beads.
4 120mm fans down the bottom.
4 120mm fans up the top.
The fans run for 15 minutes on, 30 minutes off. Also tried 15 minutes every hour. No matter how often they run - top remains fairly stable.
2 SC shelves & 2 SC drawers by John.
About 6 packs of Boveda 65%.
Cigar Oasis Plus. Removed foam for Beads.
1 pound of kitty litter up the back of the cooler over the drain hole.

The Wine cooler is controlled using an Inkbird, it turns the unit on/off, it also turns the humidifier on/off. Beads alone, unfortunately, don't keep the humidity up - hence the Oasis. Beads are more for catching excess and as a help to the Oasis unit.
It's set to 19°C and 65% RH.
The bottom, middle, and upper middle are all in the 60 - 67% range - which is fine.
The top, however, is always 70% or more. I'm not a fan of that.

I've tried re-arranging beads, hoping dry beads could get the humidity up the top down. Tried putting all beads in 1 drawer. That doesn't work. So I'm at a loss. I did wait 2 days for any beads to reach any sort of equilibrium. I didn't expect instant results - hence I waited.
It's only the top level. Everything else is fine for me. I know 70% RH isn't harmful, but I'd like it down to 65%. The beads that aren't dry are fine - they don't need spritzing very often.
The shelves/drawers are well prepared. They were wiped down multiple times. I had Boveda seasoning packs with them for well over 4 months. So that's out of the picture.
I also had the shelves/drawers sitting for about 2 weeks with nothing, so they're not releasing humidity, either.

Basically, the top is too high for my liking. Every other level is fine.

At a loss for what to do.
Does anyone have any ideas?

*Links to my accessories:*
120mm fans (generic)
Kitty litter - generic silica, unscented.
Cybercool 28 bottle.
Cigar Oasis Plus
Beads - Heartfelt. 65%
Shelves
Inkbird IHC-230


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## blackrabbit (Jan 29, 2017)

With the fans one would think the rising humidity would get dispersed evenly. Are you using a seperate hygrometer for the top level?


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## JtAv8tor (Apr 12, 2017)

Odd enough I usually have higher RH on the bottom of mine, makes me wonder if perhaps your upper hygrometer is out of calibration and reading high 


Sent from the safe-house under Witness Protection


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## disco_potato (Oct 7, 2017)

Lucifer Morningstar said:


> Hey folks.
> 
> *The top, however, is always 70% or more. I'm not a fan of that.*


Humidity rises. If you want the top to be lower, lower the RH on the bottom. Rotate your sticks every month or so and you shouldn't have issues. Maybe turn off the fans blowing from the bottom? I see a ~2% difference in a tupper that's about 19" high. Your cooler looks to ~2x that height but shows a 10% difference.

Do you have pictures of your setup?


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## Mindcrime01 (Aug 3, 2017)

Lucifer, I am having the exact same problem with the high humidity in the top. It was 10% higher in the top than the bottom. I tried to move my shelves and drawers around but it didn’t help. I bought a Oasis also to try to move the air around more but it didn’t help either. I unplugged my humidor last night to see if that would work and the humidity is perfect all around it now but the temp inside is 75F. I think that might be too high though. I have two pounds of beads scattered around the unit. When my oasis runs dry I think I will keep it running just to move some air around. I can’t figure out why it is that when I plug in the humidor to keep it cool it screws up the humidity.


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## Scap (Nov 27, 2012)

Cut your fans to just two, and duct them. One pulling from the top blowing down, the other pulling from bottom blowing up.
This will cause the air to mix and help it reach a neutral average


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## zephead61 (Apr 18, 2012)

*You need this*



Lucifer Morningstar said:


> Hey folks.
> 
> *My wineador setup:*
> Cybercool 28 bottle TE.
> ...


Air Circulation Kit - Short Cable


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## Lucifer Morningstar (Jan 13, 2017)

blackrabbit said:


> With the fans one would think the rising humidity would get dispersed evenly. Are you using a seperate hygrometer for the top level?


Separate, calibrated, fresh batteries (March this year) hygrometer. Caliber IV. 
Tried a new calibrated hygrometer. Still reads the same (within 1%).



JtAv8tor said:


> Odd enough I usually have higher RH on the bottom of mine, makes me wonder if perhaps your upper hygrometer is out of calibration and reading high


See above. I've always had higher humidity up the top.



disco_potato said:


> Humidity rises. If you want the top to be lower, lower the RH on the bottom. Rotate your sticks every month or so and you shouldn't have issues. Maybe turn off the fans blowing from the bottom? I see a ~2% difference in a tupper that's about 19" high. Your cooler looks to ~2x that height but shows a 10% difference.
> 
> Do you have pictures of your setup?


I originally had 2 up the top, 2 down the bottom. Started off with 1 and found that didn't do much. Anyway, even with 4, the humidity up the top is still too high.
The newest additions were 2 more fans down the bottom. Despite how many fans, or how little fans - humidity up the top was always higher.
Pictures:


http://imgur.com/woQgs

Hygrometer readings are a bit off due to me opening the door. I added some Camco fridge fans blowing towards the back to see if it made any difference (it didn't). Had them in overnight, and today so far.

I'm also reading conflicting reports on humidity, some say it rises, others say it falls, others say it depends on other conditions.
So I'm not sure what to believe.



Mindcrime01 said:


> Lucifer, I am having the exact same problem with the high humidity in the top. It was 10% higher in the top than the bottom. I tried to move my shelves and drawers around but it didn't help. I bought a Oasis also to try to move the air around more but it didn't help either. I unplugged my humidor last night to see if that would work and the humidity is perfect all around it now but the temp inside is 75F. I think that might be too high though. I have two pounds of beads scattered around the unit. When my oasis runs dry I think I will keep it running just to move some air around. I can't figure out why it is that when I plug in the humidor to keep it cool it screws up the humidity.


I've also tried unplugging mine. But I have an Inkbird that does the turning on/off for me. Think of it like a STC1000 but without someone having to wire it in.



Scap said:


> Cut your fans to just two, and duct them. One pulling from the top blowing down, the other pulling from bottom blowing up.
> This will cause the air to mix and help it reach a neutral average


I'm not very handy. How do I go about ducting them?

The wineador itself is pretty empty, I only have the 1 box in there at present. The rest is just beads.

Thanks for the help thus far.


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## UBC03 (Nov 18, 2015)

Wet beads on the bottom, dry beads on top.

The humidity will rise and the dry beads will suck it up.

sent from... searching for Easter eggs and my sanity


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## Scap (Nov 27, 2012)

Lucifer Morningstar said:


> I'm not very handy. How do I go about ducting them?


Pipe, tubes, Pringles cans...find something close to the diameter of the fan, and put it on the outlet side.


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## disco_potato (Oct 7, 2017)

Have you tried moving the Oasis to the bottom?

Sent from the future using Tapatalk


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## Mindcrime01 (Aug 3, 2017)

I finally got mine working great. Today I took a water bottle and cut the top and bottom off it. Then I cut it in half long ways. I pulled out the tray that was in front of the fan and took small tacks and tacked the one half of the bottle to the top of the tray and the other half to the bottom. The curve in the bottles is moving the air from the fan up and down and not straight ahead. I cut a little off each long edge that wasn't tacked down and it adjusted how much curve is in the bottle to move the air around. My temp and humidity are perfect in the whole unit now. I will try to get some pictures and put them on here tomorrow.


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## Lucifer Morningstar (Jan 13, 2017)

UBC03 said:


> Wet beads on the bottom, dry beads on top.
> 
> The humidity will rise and the dry beads will suck it up.
> /QUOTE]
> ...


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## Lucifer Morningstar (Jan 13, 2017)

I think ducting is going to be needed.
I'll have one duct moving air from the bottom to the top, and one duct from bottom to the middle.
This should be made out of PVC Piping. I'll have to go to a hardware store and I'll figure something out.

I've got some 80mm fans coming. It seems there's bugger all air being moved from the bottom to the shelves. So hoping the fans at the back (bottom) with assistance of the 80mm fans can at least move some air around.

Will see what can be done.


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## Mindcrime01 (Aug 3, 2017)

Well the plastic bottle trick didn't work very long. It seemed to work pretty good for a week then it is back to low humidity and higher temperature on the bottom and higher humidity and lower temperature on the top. I give up. I unplugged it and the humidity better all around but the temp is around 75. I don't know if that is too high or not to store the cigars.


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## Kidvegas (Oct 17, 2016)

That’s a higher temp than I’d prefer but not outta control. There’s many brothers in warmer climates that are dealing with the same issues. My only advice would be to keep the Rh low! I’m sitting now at 68-70* in my unplugged Wineador and cooler but the rh is hovering around 63% with no ill affects. 


Sent from my Recliner


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## Lucifer Morningstar (Jan 13, 2017)

I bought 10 Valterra fans, as they're slightly smaller than the Camco and blow air straight up.
I switched to HCM beads, and everything is OK. I also noticed the humidifier turns on maybe 1 time a day after switching to HCM.

The top humidity is relatively stable, on the shelf. 

I'm going to be buying more HCM beads for the 2nd and last levels, as they are a tad low.

One thing I did notice - the back wall of the cooler has some odd humidity levels, compared to shelves. It's high. I could put a false backing on if I cared enough, but as the shelves and drawers themselves (every last part of them) are fine, I'm happy. 

Things are OK.

Things I changed:
The 8 fans are on a timer. 30 minutes on every hour. 15 on, 15 off, 15 on, etc.
Put 2 80mm fans on the back of the cooler. They are on a repeat timer - 4 on, 9 off.
Switched to HCM beads from Heartfelt.
Added loads of Valterra fans.
Stopped being anal about anything not 65% humidity.

What I may do:
Add 2 more fans to the back of the cooler. Just because.
Duct some fans.
Buy some pre-made fans with ducting.


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## Kidvegas (Oct 17, 2016)

Lucifer Morningstar said:


> I bought 10 Valterra fans, as they're slightly smaller than the Camco and blow air straight up.
> I switched to HCM beads, and everything is OK. I also noticed the humidifier turns on maybe 1 time a day after switching to HCM.
> 
> The top humidity is relatively stable, on the shelf.
> ...


Dude! That's a lot of machinery inside a Wineador. 10 fans and maybe more? Wowzers....seen the pics you loaded and gotta say perhaps think about a big ole cooler instead! If i had to invest so much extra artillery for mine I seriously would of bailed long ago.

2 lbs kitty litter and no fans works for me. I applaud the project but, seems way overkill from my humble perspective!

Sent from my Recliner


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## Lucifer Morningstar (Jan 13, 2017)

Well, it's working relatively well.
I know what to do in the future if I get another cooler. All the extra bits that I'm not using will always find a use. 
The Camco fans I'm using for my camping fridge. 
The Heartfelt beads I can use to soak up humidity in my gun safe. 

I'm a perfectionist. That's why I've added so much artillery. I could probably do away with some fans, and nothing would change. But the ones stuck up top/bottom are stuck there and I'd rather not fiddle, so they stay there. The mini fans - well I'll move some around.
It's been a fun project. Humidity today has hovered around 64- 66% which IMO is pretty damn good.
Only thing I need to do is buy some more HCM beads, and it'd be all done. Then I can start filling it up. Australian taxes are really high, though.


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## Lucifer Morningstar (Jan 13, 2017)

Update: 
The story up until that point above was the humidity was holding ok I wasn't pleased and I basically stopped caring. It was winter and the humidity was in the acceptable range for me (62 - 68 ). Temperature was fine due to an external temperature controller.

Along comes summer and the unit cools a lot more often, and with just beads (because the oasis is crap) humidity was dropping into the 50's. Fans running, beads everywhere, Bovedas also there.
I removed some Boveda's and beads, and it helped a little...

I had some 7L Sistema's for storage reasons and I also had 3 SC shelves that you buy for about $15. I see people using these as tupperdors. As they have a nice seal around it I had the bright idea of shoving in the SC shelves, put beads in and shove it in the cooler.
it worked! Humidity has been fine, I've been looking at it regularly, the temperature is great, the humidity is rock solid at 65 - 67% RH.

I totally gave up trying to make a TE Cooler humidor work. So as I grow my selection, more Tupperware will follow. The wire shelves will go in the cooler, and Tupperware will sit on it.
This is due to summer making the cooler run more often, and Australia's electricity costs too high to make running an air conditioner 24/7 un-economical unless you're super rich. Electricity prices for us is at least $10/day without the air conditioner running. 



I really would have liked to have gotten the wine cooler working without having to get Tupperware in it. But my skills are limited to hot glue, wooden dowels, and Velcro.
But I can't. Tupperware works, and the cooler works. Humidity and temperature absolutely fine.Hasa diga eebowai (google it).


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